The Ghost of Soundview Drive

On the North Shore of Eastern Long Island, there was, once upon another time, a beautiful country road that meandered along, dotted with lovely summer bungalows graced with green grass, trees, fragrant flowers, bees and songbirds and butterflies, and when the day was done — fireflies. On the north side of this narrow road, through the trees and tall grasses, were the rocky beaches of Long Island Sound.

Back in that other time, families from the crowded New York boroughs saved and bought and nurtured many of these bungalows for their annual three months of paradise — all nestled peacefully among the year-rounders and their more formidable houses. And on those lovely days on the beach, blankets were spread, sandcastles were built, and wonder was the order of the day. 

At day’s end, evening fell and crickets and cicadas played their nightly symphony as grown-ups sat in their charming, lush yards and talked and laughed, while the children played and caught fireflies in glass jars, always letting them go — living lightning in a bottle for only a few glowing minutes. And as the sun set, the beaches would light up with burning driftwood and laughter and teenagers finding their summer love. 

Soundview Drive, as it was so aptly named, wove its way along a string of beaches with names like Hallock Landing, Broadway, Friendship, Queen, Nimbus, and ended at a place called Nautilus, whose wooden stairway descended to its rocky beach. 

As the seasons changed, so did the magic. Winter was especially dramatic — frozen, lonely, and monochrome — forlorn, though beautiful. But the summers, those were the days these beaches were born for. 

And so it was from post World War II through the Age of Aquarius and a little beyond—until about 1972 — that marked the end of an era. Over the ensuing years and cemented in the now, all but a very few of the bungalows have been replaced with many overly large and out-of-place houses that overpower the quaint road, betray the landscape, and confuse and disturb the eye. 

The once welcoming ivy-covered trees and brambled growth that invited one to stroll down to the shore or descend the stairs and rest on its intermittent benches are now overgrown or neglected or gone; erased by the winds of time and the storms and gradual erosion left unchecked by apathy, cluelessness, or both. 

Those portals of green that once opened to the blue beyond are now a series of mostly neglected chain-link fences or crumbling wooden barriers with rusted and faded signs proclaiming the beaches to be private and reserved for Association Members only — a painfully decrepit, though self-inflicted welcome to those current associates.

Time marches on and all things must pass, but a more disappointing march to this passing would be hard to imagine for a place that, in its day, was so lush and welcoming and perfect. I suppose the current perpetrators of this new Soundview Drive may have never known its bygone and simple splendor — how seamlessly and peacefully the dwellings and the landscaping blended into its surround. How sad for them. Though every here and there along the rough and potted road are a very few original, well cared for relics, and an occasional newer bungalow-ish copy, all straining to hold on to the spirit of the past — though hopelessly surrounded and suffocated and ultimately losing the fight. The charm and style and grace of the place is lost, though the beaches are still as rocky, and the water, choppy and blue as it’s been since this very long island made its way to its current home. 

The alteration of a places look and feel and magic is, sadly, not unique to this particular place and its once glorious time. The purveyors of this defacing should be forgiven because, I suppose, they know not what they’ve done. They may have no knowledge or memory of what was — when life was a simple matter, and simple pleasures came from a less complex life, where the nights glow and entertainment was the setting of the sun and the twinkling of lightning bugs, when there was a stillness and an ear reserved for a grandmothers’ stories about how life was when she was young, when sitting and watching and feeling the last orange glow of daylight was enough of a show — when we were simply connected to the magic. 

We are all are wired to remember the stories we heard as children and, for many of us, to become the storyteller. We hope the stories of new generations have the same character, wonder, and charm of those about times gone by. But that landscape of yesteryear has changed, as it does, and what has been erased will never be again. So the new stories of the old days will be different, and so it has gone through the generations — each having their own stories to tell. 

For those who were there, back then, when Soundview Drive was bungalows and fireflies, do we promise to preserve, at least, a taste of the past, of a golden time, to commit to tell and memorialize its story, or do we let it fade and then disappear altogether and forever?

All things do pass, and surely will when there is no one left who cares to remember, and testify, and pass down. 

But, the essence of what was, then, so strong and sure may linger on, like the ghost so rooted to what once was, forever lingers. 

Mother Earth does have a memory and like all living things, a ferocious will to live — to survive. Her ghosts of beauty, magic, and wonders’ past are everywhere, and maybe, in ways unknown to we mortals, are captured and preserved in a place hidden to us. And might, by some miracle, in some way, in some time, allow us to find a way back. 

A way back for those of us who remember and cherish, and once gone, may be allowed a do-over, innocent and unknowing of coming back, but this time with some hidden knowledge that will, at a special moment, by some Magic, evoke a shiver of having been here before. A faint memory of a place from sometime else. And this time, find a way to do it even better — to live it more slowly, to understand its wonder more deeply, and to love it even more.